


The Devastation of Southwark, 1683

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Devastation-verse [1]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M, devastation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-07
Updated: 2004-07-07
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:43:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10679850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity
Summary: "He wondered whether Sparrow might be some sort of Imp himself, lately escaped from some poor sod's shoulder and full of unholy glee at the prospect of corrupting Jack Shaftoe."





	The Devastation of Southwark, 1683

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the addictive [](http://tessabeth.livejournal.com/profile)[tessabeth](http://tessabeth.livejournal.com/), on condition of her producing similar 'to show that it could be done'.

Jack Shaftoe was not, in general, given to complaint, unless there was some profit to be had from it; and as this was seldom the case, he preferred to keep his woes to himself and plaster a merry-Vagabond mask on top of them all. But there were certain injustices that were simply beyond the bounds of tolerable behaviour, and one of these was the tendency of the world at large to think him dishonest. Even when -- _especially_ when -- he was telling the truth.

"Your sobriety and wit commend you," he lied, "even while your perspicacity lags --"

A falsetto shriek would have been appropriate, not to mention compelling, in this situation. Jack, who had perfected his own during several youthful escapades, had never quite lost the knack; but Mother Williams had annexed the higher end of the register, and Jack was left to deliver his nicely-turned epithets in something more nearly approaching a bellow.

"I'll see the colour of your money, you thieving rogue!"

"Mistress Williams," said Jack, turning as he spoke so that all of his audience (prostitutes and their customers, pot-boys, peddlers, actors, clerks, ballad-hawkers, a stray alchemist, and a growing obstruction of passers-by on the street outside) could hear him, "can it be that news of the King of the Vagabonds, _L'Emmerdeur_ , Half-Cocked Jack, has not yet _penetrated_ to this most salubrious of houses?"

A cheer; though rather a small cheer. Come to think of it, 'penetrated' might not have been the most apposite of words, under the circumstances.

The bawd squinted at him. "You ain't 'im," she pronounced. "And you was upstairs with my Flora." She thrust out a palm roughly the size, shape and hue of a roof-tile. "It's a shilling a fuck. And watch your language in my 'ouse."

"What is the world coming to," Jack enquired of the ceiling, striking a pose, "when a man must defend himself, his reputation, his very _person_ , against the slings and arrows ..."

But there was a commotion in the gallery; then, enter stage right above, a Painted Whore. Many an artfully-undressed actress had played this role in the theatres of Covent Garden, but Flora looked more the part than most, having just emerged from a profitable transaction with a sea-captain, lately arrived from the East and rumoured to be not only young and handsome, but rich as a Lord. Her laces were half undone; her mouth still red and wet with kisses; her face aglow with satiation. The other girls eyed her enviously.

"It's true, Mother," she called, hanging over the balustrade in a way guaranteed to display her charms to best advantage. There was a round of applause. Dear Flora; he'd always had a soft spot (or, more aptly, a hard one) for her, even back while she was still calling herself Fanny and touting for trade round the back of the playhouses.

"You get back to your young man, girl!"

"But he is!" Flora insisted. She lowered her voice, though not to such an extent that anyone present -- and the place was as packed as any Drury Lane theatre -- could fail to make out her words. "I made sure of it. _Half-Cocked_."

Gasps from the assembled multitude. Jack performed another revolution, arms spread wide, wishing he'd worn his heavier -- and thus more Dramatickal -- cloak.

"It never is," said Mother Williams scornfully. "Half-Cocked Jack is a _gentleman_ , they say, tall and handsome and well-spoken."

It was a challenge, clear as day: but Jack had learnt the hard way -- a lesson oft reinforced with fraternal kicks, pinches and fisticuffs -- that sometimes it was better to keep quiet. He could almost hear Bob's voice insisting that this was one of those occasions; almost feel his brother's elbow, affectionately planting itself in his ribs. So Jack merely raised an eyebrow and leered at Mother Williams, forbearing from pointing out that she was no vision herself; bloated and gin-blotched and blowsy, her visage not improved by the scowl she was bestowing upon him.

"You was upstairs," she screeched at him.

"He was a perfect gentleman, Mother," said Flora reassuringly, snuggling up to the man beside her. That must be the sea-captain, come out to see what all the commotion was about. He looked young to be master of his own ship, but his shirt and breeches (he wore nothing else) were of fine cut and cloth. He wound his arm around Flora, and she giggled.

Jack rolled his eyes. He had a reputation to maintain, and Flora didn't seem to have realised that she was detracting from it. True, Half-Cocked Jack would never again be capable of living up to the notoriety that the young Jack Shaftoe had acquired; but a rake's a rake, even if the means of debauchery have been cruelly taken from him. "I only wanted a word with the lovely Flora," he said.

"And what word would that be?" demanded Mother Williams suspiciously.

Jack raised an eyebrow. The pertinent word had, in fact, been 'lend', and Flora, flush with the extra sixpences she'd creamed from her customers, had done him proud. But the old bitch didn't need to know that. "A gentleman," he said, "never tells."

Mother Williams dropped her gaze first, scowling hard enough to make the veins in her temple pop out. Jack beamed triumphantly at the house, and swept a courtly bow to Flora, who blew him a kiss.

Jack had reached the end of his script; but, like an actor buoyed by an appreciative crowd, he found himself reluctant to relinquish centre stage. How fortunate that his very own Imp of the Perverse perched atop his shoulder, whispering improvisations directly into Jack's own receptive brain. How fortunate that Bob, the Voice of Reason, was absent upon some tedious Continental business.

Jack froze, as though arrested by a sudden blinding revelation from on high.

"Unless," he said, turning back to Mother Williams, "you'd like to check for yourself?" And, in case she had mistaken his meaning, he started to unbutton his breeches.

That started the shrieking again, right enough, and by the time Jack ended up ("and _never_ come back!") out in Stoney Street, his head was beginning to ache from all the commotion. Nothing that a couple of pints of ale wouldn't fix; and how convenient, there was the Anchor just down the street from the bordello, and a couple of the blokes who'd been peering round the door earlier were making for the taproom.

Jack's reputation, and the trove of stories (to which he daily added borrowings from a cornucopia of sources, playhouses and legal gossip being presently the most fecund) entertained his new friends, and they fulfilled their part of the contract by keeping him supplied with warm, cloudy beer for the next half-hour or so. Then George -- he thought it was George -- got up to go outside, and when he came back Jack couldn't help noticing that he was someone else.

His head cleared abruptly, despite the warm, airless fug inside the low-ceilinged room. George, who had bought him beer earlier, had been a shambling, badly-jointed fellow, with red hair; he seemed to have been replaced, as far as Jack could tell through half-closed eyes, by a foreign-looking cove in a hat. Jack carried on pretending to be stupid with drink: this came without difficulty, being a state of which he had considerable experience. He darted a glance at the other side of the table, but George's friend had disappeared too.

"You're not that drunk, Mr Shaftoe," said the stranger.

"Course not," said Jack agreeably, loosening his knife in its sheath.

"I've heard of you," said the foreigner. His English was excellent; most likely he was a Spanish spy. "I've even read a novel about you. In French, of course, so it was rather like being drowned in a vat of sugar-syrup. But most diverting, nonetheless, and I'd nothing else to do until the gale let up."

A novel? Jack had heard of them. He cracked open an eye and peered at his companion. The other man was looking askance at him from under the shadowing brim of his tricorne. Nice hat, thought Jack; must get one. The man's face was dark, but Jack could see white lines fanning from the corners of his eyes; not born that colour, then, but come to it in sun and wind. Perhaps he wasn't a foreign spy after all, but had merely travelled in tropical lands.

"I know you," said Jack, recognition dawning at last. "You were --"

"-- having a word with Flora." The man grinned: his teeth were unnaturally good. "I hear that's what they're calling it these days; 'tis a while since I've been in England. Lovely girl, Flora. Lovely ..." He swung a hand idly in mid air, tracing curves. "Welcoming, too."

"She hasn't changed, then," Jack said, rather bitterly.

"I beg your pardon," said the other. "And I know who you are, Jack Shaftoe -- your reputation precedes you -- but perhaps you don't know me. I'm Captain Jack Sparrow."

He paused, as though Jack were supposed to recognise the name. Jack, his self-regard bolstered by two pints of ale, made his ignorance plain.

Sparrow looked disappointed. "Any road, Mr Shaftoe, I have a proposition to put to you."

"Aye?" said Jack, draining his tankard and examining the inside of it meaningfully.

"Might just be that I can find a solution to your unique situation, as recounted in song and story, and most lately by the lovely Flora."

Jack's heart leapt, but only for a moment. He had never seen an alchemist as young as this man, so _that_ kind of solution was probably not on offer; and he had neither the air nor the accoutrements of a barber-surgeon. That left the third option, which was lent weight -- in Jack's opinion -- by the way this Captain Sparrow painted his eyes, and wore a woman's gold ear-bob, and leaned closer than was really necessary.

Jack came to his conclusion, and rolled his eyes. "Thank you kindly," he said, without overmuch sincerity, "but I'd enough offers of that kind in Port Royal."

"Ah, you've been to Jamaica? But no, mate -- forgive me for correcting you, but I really don't think you've had this particular offer before." He smiled at Jack, and Jack noticed for the first time that there was _gold_ in his mouth. He refused to be impressed. The buccaneers he'd met in Port Royal had flaunted their treasure for all to see, and several of them, at one time or another, had seemed keen to lavish it upon Jack, subject to certain terms and conditions. If Jack had been inclined to lie back and be plundered, he'd have come home a rich man. Or perhaps he'd never have come home at all, thus sparing himself the delights of Mary Dolores, the trip to Dunkirk and the Incident.

But Jack Shaftoe _liked_ girls -- even now, when female company was of no practical use whatsoever -- and he had never felt the faintest urge to succumb to the blandishments of any of the hulking brutes who'd liked the look of his arse. Not that this Sparrow, to be fair, was cut of the same cloth; no committed sodomite, surely, would chose Flora with whom to celebrate his return to London Town. He was slender and sinewy, and his face was almost pretty; the eye-paint, of course, but he was easier on the eye than most of Jack's suitors back in Port Royal.

"What've you got that the others haven't?" he asked anyway. It was a matter of principle to argue, since he had no intention of accepting this offer any more than any of the rest. "It certainly ain't modesty," added Jack, more or less under his breath.

"I'm Captain Jack Sparrow!" Sparrow's arms went wide, and Jack edged out of range. He recognised the declamatory voice, having practiced it enough himself; but it was always educational to watch a mountebank at work, and Jack deeply resented the indubitable fact that he could learn a great deal from Captain Jack Sparrow.  
  
"I've been all around the world -- for yes, it's as round as an apple -- to Barbary, to Madagascar, to Hispaniola and Old Spain, to Serendip and Saigon and e'en Singapore. And I've learned how to bring untold delights to the most reluctant, the most fearful, the most, er, _unusual_ of lovers." A brief flash of gold. "Though if you'd rather just drink yourself under the table, then that's up to you, mate."

"Can't be done," said Jack gloomily. He'd have stared into his beer, but it was all gone. "The delights of Venus are beyond me now."

Sparrow leered; it was really the only word for that smile of his. "Come with me," he murmured, leaning even closer so that Jack could smell the strong spirits on his breath, "and I'll make you a liar."

Now that was a good one. Jack leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. Sparrow scowled at him.

"You say you've read that book about me," Jack said, sobering. (His cup was still empty.) "If there's a grain of truth in it, there'll be a bushel of falsehoods. No man can make me a liar."

Sparrow smiled. "That's true enough. And yet ... there's lies and lies, ain't there? Deceits and duplicities and misleadings. Pretences. Plots. Strategies."

"Aye," said Jack, wondering what this was leading to, and whether it would be worth staying around for. Aha! At last Sparrow was raising his hand and beckoning the pot-boy. Jack sighed happily. Not only was he going to get more drunk, but it'd be ever so much easier to fend off this pretty Captain if he'd a few in him.

"I've been wondering, mate," said Jack Sparrow, once their cups were full again. "How'd you come to have a book written about you?"

Shaftoe shrugged, smirking. "What can I say? They've all heard the stories --"

"Ah, but is there any truth in 'em?"

Jack shrugged again. "Dunno, mate. You tell me."

"You haven't read it?"

"Can't read," said Jack cheerfully, draining his cup and setting it down with a thump. "How does it end?"

Sparrow rolled his eyes and summoned another refill. " _L'Emmerdeur_ is an entertainment in two parts," he said. "The first part, as far as I can remember, is a series of bawdy tales, interspersed with mayhem; the Bishop's wife, the Indian Princess, et cetera."

"She was a lovely lass, that Princess," said Jack, wiping away a sentimental tear. "Name of Dorothy. Came from Plymouth, she did."

"All very educational," Sparrow assured him. "Spent many happy hours in my bunk, reading of your amatory adventures." He cleared his throat. "Then there's the, er, the Incident in Dunkirk, which had quite the opposite effect."

"You've no idea," said Jack bravely, noticing that his companion had crossed his legs under the table, and was looking slightly pale beneath the tan.

"And then in the second half," said Sparrow hastily, "your adventures become more Barock, more intricate and more excellent in their design, more --"

"I'll bet there's less fucking, though," said Jack Shaftoe. "In fact, no fucking at all, if truth be told. I must amuse myself by other means, nowadays."

Sparrow had recovered his aplomb. "Don't say I didn't offer, mate," he said airily, with the sort of gesture that accompanied the very deepest courtly bow of Jack's theatrickal repertoire. "So, to return to the matter at hand; you've no notion who might have penned this entertainment?"

"None whatsoever," said Jack. "What's it to you, anyway?"

Sparrow glanced down at the table for a moment. Jack wondered if any of the marks scratched into the wood were writing.

"I've a phant'sy," said Sparrow carelessly, "to be the hero of my own picaresque."

Jack made a rude noise. "Reckon you're worth a whole book, do you?"

Sparrow narrowed his eyes. "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow! I --"

"Aye," said Jack. "Well, you're a wealthy man. There's always some cully down on his luck hanging around the playhouses, in need of a few guineas."

"What of it?"

"What of it?" Jack mimicked. "Why, you sit down with your starving playwright -- or maybe one of the actors, they're always in search of new roles to win them fame -- and you tell him your tale --"

Sparrow had it now; he looked rapt. "Tell my tale the way I'd wish it told," he said, "and my man writes it all down, in a fair hand, embellished and decorated and stuffed with allusions to myth and history."

Jack shrugged. "If you like that sort of thing," he said.

"So, Mr Shaftoe," said Sparrow, straightening in his seat, "when can you introduce me to such a man?"

"Who, me?" said Jack. "I never said --"

* * *

By sunset of the following day, Jack Shaftoe was almost consumed by two complementary emotions. He was brimming with professional admiration for Jack Sparrow's ability to spin an excellent tale -- nay, a whole book-ful of excellent tales, from his birth in an Eastern palace to his sacking of Nassau Port, wherever that might be -- and to balance, like a juggler, the various elements of romance, wit, pathos and violence that constituted a good story. All well and good; but Shaftoe was also thoroughly sick of having to sit and listen to Sparrow's (admittedly mellifluous) voice without being permitted to cap the pirate's exploits with tales of his own, less relentlessly maritime, adventures. For Captain Jack Sparrow was most definitely a pirate; he'd pillaged and plundered ships and settlements in places that Jack Shaftoe had never even heard of, and now he sat at ease in a Southwark stew, describing his acquisition of the _Black Pearl_ \-- "the fastest, most beautiful ship in the Caribbean, no word of a lie" -- in a daring escapade off the coast of Brazil.

"So we hove to, and laid a sea-anchor to steady her in the raging tempest; for we'd had to reef all but the tops'l to save from being carried away --"

Jack couldn't stand it any longer; the level of detail was making him feel seasick. "If this ship of yours is so wonderful," he said mutinously, "why're you here, and not aboard of 'er?"

The clerk -- one George Locksley, lately of Nottingham-town and still haggard from a lean month of importuning actors to read his play -- looked relieved at the interruption. He took the opportunity to set down his pen and flex his cramped fingers. Sparrow poured more ale for himself and Locksley, and, as an afterthought, for Jack.

"The _Pearl_ 's a pirate ship," he said grandly. "Only a fool could take her for anything else. So she's moored downriver, away from those little Customs-men and their busy mates, not to mention your pretty Navy boys and their charming press-gangs who play so generous in the Greenwich taverns. No, my lovely's safe in a hidden creek; I'll hire an oarsman and be back to her the minute my business in town is concluded."

Jack was aware of a strange sense of loss, as though a pickpocket had relieved him of a silver coin (though Jack Sparrow was surely gold, with all that gleam and shine) before he'd had a chance to spend it.

"When's that, then?" he said belligerently.

"Why, Mr Shaftoe," said Jack Sparrow, "I might almost begin to believe that you wanted me to extend my ... stay."

His smile hinted at extensions of quite a different nature.

Jack laughed merrily. "Why, what profit would there be for me?"

Sparrow leaned closer, and his voice was so low that Jack must strain to make out his words over the cheerful racket of the taproom. "We've discussed that matter already. You declined."

"Ah, so your offer's only good for one night, Captain?" said Jack scornfully, ignoring the little voice (it sounded remarkably like the absent Bob's) which was shrieking something about depravity, sodomy and the road to Hell. Locksley, he saw with relief, had gone outside, presumably to convert some of the ale back into piss. Jack was happier not to discuss this matter within earshot of anybody else, especially if they could write it down and read it back again.

"Not at all, Mr Shaftoe," said Jack Sparrow, smile now positively feral. "But you've changed your tune quite dramatically; may I ask why you've warmed to me now?"

Jack thought fast. "I've heard many tales, now, of your exploits, Captain," he said pleasantly. "If you can sack Nassau Port without a shot -- and, being an ignorant peasant, I'd always thought Nassau was another of those German Principalities, miles from the sea; but I'm willing to learn different -- then maybe you can overcome the physiological deficiencies with which I find myself burdened."

Sparrow beamed at him, and reached out his hand. Jack stared at it for a moment; then, remembering how some men of business sealed their bargains, he clasped hands with the pirate.

"Delighted to find you so amenable to new experience, luv," said Sparrow, holding on for a moment too long. His hand was dry and warm, and his thumb rested on the branded V at the base of Jack's thumb. "I trust I'll be able to persuade you that you've chosen wisely."

"Well," said Jack, with as innocent a smile as he could conjure under the circumstances, "if you can't, I'll be sure to mention it to Mr Locksley, while he's copying out your tale for the print-house." He nodded at the heap of old bills, play-scripts and billets-doux upon which the clerk had made his notes. "Maybe we'll find some other points that need correction."

Jack Sparrow's eyes narrowed, and his leer became almost a snarl. Jack saw the pirate's free hand go to the dagger at his waist; he tensed, but then Sparrow gave him a sudden, sharp smile, and released Jack's hand.

"You drive a hard bargain, Mr Shaftoe," he said, nodding to Locksley as he rejoined them. "But I hope we'll both profit by it. Mr Locksley?"

"S-sir?" stammered Locksley. His eyes, Jack noted, were fixed on Sparrow almost hungrily.

"It's getting late," said Sparrow. "Here's coin for your work today. There'll be more tomorrow. Shall we say noon?"

Jack saw a quick flash of gold, and Locksley gawped at the coin he'd caught. Sparrow, no doubt, was making sure of the clerk's loyalty; but Jack had no doubt that he could bully Locksley into transforming _The Dramatic History of Captain Jack Sparrow_ into something that was more comedy than adventure, if need be. He was oddly torn between wanting Sparrow's promises -- carnal delights, untold pleasures, et cetera -- to be true, and the desire to wreak a mocking revenge the pirate, to prove that no one made sport of Half-Cocked Jack.

It was dark outside, and cold, and generally sobering. Jack paused in the doorway of the inn, trying to gather his thoughts; but Sparrow had already set off towards Mother William's establishment, waving aside Jack's protest with an extravagant gesture. Jack followed, eyeing the captain -- the _pirate_ \-- covertly, and hoping that none of his mates were around to see him in such company. The man swayed, and not with the commonplace reel of the drunkard, or the sea-rocked gait of the sailor; he tilted and posed like a whore, and Jack ground his teeth. Only his sheer bloody-minded curiosity, and the opportunity for a sweet revenge if Sparrow were lying, kept him from slipping away down the alley at the side of the brothel.

Mother Williams glared fearsomely at the two of them as they passed through the common-room, but Sparrow's presence seemed to silence her. Flora was at one of the tables, flirting busily with a ponderous bewhiskered man; she waved at them both behind his back, and began to stand, but Sparrow made a complicated gesture and she sank back onto the well-padded lap. Jack was reminded of a puppet-play he had seen last week at the fair. Monstrously _unfair_ of Sparrow to upstage Jack Shaftoe like this, sweeping in and charming the rest of the cast. Jack firmly refused to consider whether he too might, for Sparrow's purposes, be a puppet.

He wondered if they were going to Flora's room, and entertained a brief phant'sy of her returning at an inopportune moment and swooning at the actual sight of his Credential; but Sparrow bypassed the red door, and led Jack up another ladder to the top floor of the house. They ended up in a small room under the eaves, with pigeons squabbling in the thatch and a sack of straw for a mattress. Sparrow, unbelievably, must have paid Mother Williams for the room. He lit a candle-stub and retrieved a flask of rum from amid the heaped clothes (some of them a woman's) in the corner, and Jack took a hearty drink, hoping it would distract him from the notion of paying rent to anybody -- as well as from some other, uncomfortable, notions which had crept into his head, the contemplation of which was making him squirm.

"Back in Porte d'Annam," said Sparrow, with a faraway look in his eye, "there was this girl who had a book of paintings. Everyone in there was blue-faced, and some of 'em had animal-heads, the way they do in Egypt."

Jack had seen a dog-headed Gypsy once at Southwark Fair, so he nodded sagely.

"But you wouldn't believe the ways they could bend themselves, in this book," Sparrow went on, and that faraway look resolved itself into a gleam.

"Not at all flexible, me," explained Jack, clutching the flask. There was something he felt obliged to mention. "And besides, you're a man."

Sparrow's eyes flicked down to his own crotch. "Aye."

"Well, I don't fancy you, mate."

"Ah, but you're forgetting something, " said Jack Sparrow, and the gleam in his eye was positively unholy, as though he were illuminated from within; possibly by hellfire, or a smaller blaze kindled by his very own Imp of the Perverse.

"What's that?" said Jack warily, aware that he was springing a trap but unable to determine whether he had, as it were, stepped back quickly enough to escape its jaws.

"I'm a man, right enough, but I'm offering you something that no girl can give you, be she never so ... flexible."

"Yes, yes," said Jack testily. "I used to have one of my very own, mate; just because I ain't got it any more doesn't mean I've been craving anyone else's."

"It's my Christian duty to share, Mr Shaftoe," said Sparrow, with a leer that reminded Jack more than anything of the devils that decorated church-gutters.

"How do I know you're not just going to bugger me and make off with my effects?" said Jack, aware that this was the equivalent of holding open the jaws of the trap with both hands.

"Well, that's it, mate; you don't. But you didn't get where you are today, Mr Shaftoe, by passing up every opportunity, now did you?"

Jack thought of pointing out that many of the opportunities -- or, in Bob's language, 'stupid ideas' -- that he'd succumbed to were, in fact, the work of the Imp of the Perverse. From what he'd heard that afternoon, Sparrow was possessed of another such Imp, though there was little evidence of any fraternal wisdom to temper it. Indeed, Jack wondered whether Sparrow might be some sort of Imp himself, lately escaped from some poor sod's shoulder and full of unholy glee at the prospect of corrupting Jack Shaftoe.

But he'd come this far; and there might be some truth in it; and besides, with _two_ Imps of Perversity ganging up on him, Jack knew he hadn't a hope in Hell. Sparrow was stepping closer, and the candle was flickering in its jar like a theatrical Flame. Jack simply stood still, irritated and aching and half-drunk, while Sparrow (or Jack Shaftoe's own, familiar Imp) somehow made Jack tangle his fingers in the captain's knotted black hair and push his tongue into Sparrow's hot mouth, and get his free hand around Sparrow's waist to hold _him_ still, the better to grind against him.

Jack broke free at last, nerves a-jangle. He seemed to have lost the power of speech, and he stared accusingly at the pirate, who had clearly stolen it. For Sparrow was certainly not thus afflicted. In fact, he was talking again, working up to a fine pitch of enthusiasm about how, exactly, he was going to make Jack feel those fabled transports. The level of detail was vaguely repulsive, and Jack recoiled; but he recoiled in such a peculiar direction that they fell slowly, together, onto the crackling straw mattress. Jack was furiously jealous of the hard cock he was rubbing against. He was blazing hot, like he'd been in the bad months after the Incident, when he'd burnt with fever and rage until his mates had panicked and sent for the priest to administer last rites. Sparrow's skin was just as hot against his -- as though _he_ had anything to regret -- and he writhed like a girl, or at any rate like Jack's fading memories of girls. Somehow, amid the press of hands and the prickling of stray stalks through the rough cloth, Jack's breeches were loose; there was a cool hand cupping his balls, which made him forget how to breathe for a moment; and then there was Sparrow's low murmur in his ear, asking him something.

"No," said Jack, since this was much more than half likely to be the right answer wherever Jack Sparrow was concerned. It _did_ hurt (and when he realised that, he realised what the question had been) but not in a way Jack could tell anyone about. There was that same ache of unfulfilment, the way that one-legged soldiers complained about the corns on their lost feet. He felt that still, from time to time, when a pretty girl flirted with him or he woke from a vivid dream about Mary Dolores, six foot of Irish redhead with a tendency, which Jack had encouraged, to be exceedingly demanding in bed. But something was different now, something that wasn't simple pain, and (later Jack would look back at this moment, and laugh disbelievingly) it took him a while to realise that this was a sensation caused by Sparrow's hand forcing itself -- slick with some vile secretion, or unguent, or perhaps with spittle -- halfway up his arse.

He drew breath to protest, to call the Watch, to swear vilely at his persecutor. Sparrow's mouth was on his, and his tongue was stealing away Jack's power of speech all over again, and his fingers -- possibly it was just one finger -- were sapping Jack's strength. Jack could not move. His hands could move, right enough, though they did not obey him to the extent of throttling Jack Sparrow; they were more interested (perhaps this was a Stratagem) in cupping Sparrow's hard cock through his breeches. Funny to feel that so one-sidedly, with his hand but not his prick -- the only one he'd ever handled like this -- though he'd swear that the member in question had miraculously resprouted, hard and heavy like the one he could feel in his hand.

"Half-cocked, eh?" said Sparrow, pressing closer.

"More like a quarter, to be honest," Jack said artlessly. He rotated his wrist, and felt Sparrow's breath hitch against his lips. At least it was dark; but Sparrow's hand (the one that wasn't reaching for his throat, the long way round) was on him, and he must be able to feel ...

Jack wished _he_ had more skin, to feel with. He hooked his knee over Sparrow's hip, moaning at the way his arse stretched and pulled at Jack's fingers when he moved, and the way that Sparrow had somehow sneaked all sorts of new places into Jack's own body, places he would surely have noticed before, if only for their quality of edging everything with silvery lace and throwing out lines of fire through his nerves --

He could hear himself gibbering into Sparrow's mouth like a Bedlamite, and Sparrow swallowing it all like one of those quacks at the fair, eating his sins for him, twisting his fingers inside Jack's very body and rubbing his hard, wet cock against the bare skin at the top of Jack's leg.

"I can make this go on all night," he murmured into Jack's ear, and the tickle of his breath made Jack twitch -- more of a spasm, really -- around Sparrow's finger.

"Well, what do you expect me to do about it?" Jack demanded irritably; that, at any rate, was what he intended to say, but what emerged was a commingled mess of oaths, threats and pleas. Since Sparrow's cock was free of his breeches now -- Jack wondered how that had happened -- he supposed it was fair game; and there was something oddly comfortable (though comfort was far from his intention) in the sensation of a cock, a whole cock, against his palm again. He squeezed, and stroked hard, once, and Sparrow thrust into his hand, gasping. This was almost as good as doing it with a girl.

Jack took a moment, while Sparrow's fingers -- there were definitely two of them, scissoring, now -- were still, to think. He had stopped thinking at around the moment they'd left the Anchor taproom, and it was probably time to start again. He was half-naked with another man, and that man -- a pirate captain, with all manner of exotic experience ready to be recounted to any who'd listen -- had his grubby fingers (grubby now, for sure) in Jack's arsehole, no doubt prior to sodomising him repeatedly.

Jack wished he'd taken up some of those offers back in Port Royal.

If he'd known how it felt -- but then, he hadn't been Half-Cocked in Jamaica, and there had been a great many more things that he had wanted to do with certain lost, much-lamented elements of his anatomy. None of these ambitions had involved randy buccaneers. None of them had involved Jack having another man's hard cock -- ah, wait, another man's _spunk_ \-- in, or rather all over, his hand; another man moaning his name, amid obscenities, in a disturbingly deep and breathless voice; or another man's fingers rubbing anew over some interior part of Jack's anatomy that, given his extensive experience with things that gave off sparks, he couldn't help but visualise as some sort of incendiary device.

"Now, mate," said Jack Sparrow, gasping a little, "I reckon I owe you one." He licked Jack's earlobe, and bit down hard.

Jack writhed and moaned, resigned to being shameless about it all. He didn't like to admit that he'd missed the moment; although in general he went by the principle that embarrassment was something that applied only to others, this particular situation -- entirely outside his experience until now -- might prove the exception. On the other hand (a hand from which Sparrow was busily scraping his own semen) a little distraction could work wonders. And Jack was already quite wonderfully distracted by Sparrow's renewed manipulations within. He was shaking -- a fever, for sure -- and his body seemed to be responding at random, sparking like damp powder. In the old days, of course, he'd have stuck his cock into someone (into, in fact, a _girl_ ) and pumped away until he'd spent. This was obviously no longer an option; but his stones ached as though they still expected it to happen.

"Jack," he said, and stilled for a moment at the novelty of sharing his name with someone in so very intimate a situation. "Jack, I ..."

Oh Christ in Heaven, that cock was already stiffening again in his hand. And Jack could no longer ignore the way that Sparrow's hand, next to his, was slicking his member with his own cooling seed, ready to ... Jack's head went mazy with panic and disgust, and his body tightened around Sparrow's wicked fingers, and he could feel a fresh stream of gibberish rising somewhere in his chest, ready to spew out all over everything.

"Let me tell you," said Jack Sparrow's velvety voice in the warm darkness, "exactly what I'm going to do to you."

Jack rolled his eyes and groaned, though the groan had as much to do with the pirate's restless fingers as anything. "You told me earlier," he protested.

"Ah, but now I can tell you about getting my cock to rub just _there_." Sparrow pressed. Shaftoe yowled. "Pushing it in very slowly -- for I've had it both ways, mate, and slow'll suit you ever so much better -- so that you can feel it opening you up as you've never been opened before, so that you squeeze around me tighter than the classiest whore you ever had, so --"

He made a strangled noise.

"Get on with it, then, mate," Jack growled, flexing his hand on Sparrow's throat.

Sparrow chuckled, and Jack found himself rolling, face-down against the spiky straw mattress, aching for Jack Sparrow's fingers in him again even while the burn of their removal still blazed.

"I'm going to fuck you, Jack," said Sparrow, from somewhere above him. His hot mouth found Jack's neck, and he bit Jack again. "I'm going to make you spend."

Jack wanted to protest, or possibly insist, but -- having radically revised his views on sodomy in the last half-hour -- he was no longer at all sure of anything. Anyway, it was happening, _now_ , and the sudden hard push was nothing like anything else that Jack had felt tonight. Any night. In acute distress, he roared and bucked. Someone in another room swore loudly, and bellowed for him to shut up.

Sparrow was holding him down, or holding him together. Now he twined an arm between Jack and the prickly mattress and hauled him -- still transfixed and shuddering -- onto his knees. Jack blasphemed and tried to get free, but he was caught, and his traitorous body was clasping Sparrow's cock, like a sheath to a knife. He wanted to touch his own cock (a definite problem there); he wanted to come; this mountebank-pirate thought he could get one over on Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds, _L'Emmerdeur_ himself, but Half-Cocked Jack would demonstrate that he'd not be fooled so easily ...

He thought to see sparks springing from himself -- more precisely, from the knot of ruined flesh that was presently throbbing at his crotch -- with each hard, slow rub of Sparrow's cockhead against that mine inside him. Sparrow was breathing carefully, slow and harsh like a man who'd run miles, and his hand was pushing up under the shirt that Jack, against all odds, still wore, stroking over his nipples, which were -- was he cold? -- hard. Sparrow's mouth, ever so hot now, was licking and biting and kissing like an especially fierce girl, and that made Jack shiver. Sparrow's other hand was cupping his balls, oddly gently considering the way his cock was invading Jack's body, much further than his fingers had gone, much hotter, and Jack's arse was beginning to ache simply with the need to tighten impossibly at every thrust.

One of them was groaning; Jack thought it might be him. He wanted to kiss and to be kissed. He wanted (forlornly) a girl's tits in his hands. He wanted this to stop, wanted it never to have started, wanted it never to end, or to end in fire and light. Now he was gibbering again like a madman, asking for what he didn't want and couldn't have, and Sparrow's hand caught his head and twisted him around just far enough -- he heard the bones in his neck click -- for their mouths to meet.

Then a miracle, or perhaps the Apocalypse, occurred. Jack was at the heart of it, though in a disembodied state that left him unable to remember how to kiss, or breathe, or keep his balance. It was fortunate that he had never heeded Bob's tedious, albeit well-meant, advice, or he'd not have had the blessing of this sturdy, sinewy Imp of the Perverse, who -- having conducted him to this terminal point of his life -- was now lifting him high above the devastation of Southwark. There was a definite sensation of flying through the cool night air, and all around him billowed velvety black and fiery red clouds, doubtless the result of the explosion of _years'_ -worth of damp powder, or its anatomickal equivalent, deep within the hidden fortifications of Jack Shaftoe's earthly form. It seemed probable to Jack that his body had been instantly smithereened in the apocalypse, and that the trembling and spasming (and the rich, heavy odour of physical humours) that his senses insisted upon presenting to him was no more indicative of a connection with the world than the ache he'd wondered at, earlier, in his phantom cock.

For he was surely dead, and the Imp (its hot mouth murmuring affectionate blasphemies against his incorporeal neck) was carrying him away, higher and higher -- the slow route to Hell, perhaps -- away from the shattered walls, the rivers of cerulean and saffron and scarlet from the dye-works, the rampaging bear still bloody from its baiting, the cracked-open houses with their tiny figures running and screaming: there Flora, dress delightfully torn, dancing on the river-bank; there Mother Williams in rags, crawling after scattered coins on the broken earth; there the Thames, silver in the moonlight, and the greedy fires devouring the Bishop of Winchester's palace, and the black sails on the pirate ship just dropping anchor in the Pool.

-end-


End file.
